‘ARLINGTON Road,” like “The Siege,” is a dumb, overheated thriller pretending to be a smart, topical one.

While Ehren Kruger’s half-witted screenplay makes knowing references to the Oklahoma City bombing and neo-Nazi militias, it’s really a rip-off of the Red-scare flicks of the 1950s. The hysterical message is that your normal-looking neighbor and his Stepford wife might well be crazy, ultra-secretive neo-Nazi bombers.

And the Cub Scout-like group they sponsor, with its emphasis on honor and the family, is nothing but a sinister front organization, designed to brainwash your children.

The movie’s unlikely and unlikable everyman is Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges), a bitter, paranoid history professor who teaches a conspiracy-obsessed current-events course. His late wife, an FBI agent, was recently killed in a botched, Ruby Ridge-type raid, and Faraday likes to bring his students to the spot where she was shot.

One day, Faraday notices that his nice neighbor Oliver Lang (Tim Robbins) is receiving alumni mail from the University of Pennsylvania, even though Lang told him he went to Kansas State. Immediately, Faraday starts snooping around the Langs like a deranged but none-too-bright secret policeman.

His girlfriend (Hope Davis) and his late wife’s partner think Faraday’s off the wall. But the idea that Lang, whose son is now Faraday’s son’s best friend, is some kind of terrorist, sends an increasingly crazed Faraday into a yelling, ranting sweat.

Every event in the chain set off by Faraday’s obsession is signaled a mile off, except for a final plot twist that is ridiculously implausible even for a paranoid thriller.

For suspense, the film relies on music and cheap-shot visual effects. It’s not just that no one ever turns on a light when they go home at night or work late in the office. To give you that feeling of dislocation, things are always going out of focus or into super close-up.

Still, there are some exciting and some creepy moments, including one that makes good use of Joan Cusack’s usual ditz-with-something-going-on-below-the-surface shtick.

Director Mark Pellington also does a fine job with the movie’s car chases: for once, they actually look and feel dangerous. But Pellington also manages to elicit subpar performances from two of movieland’s best male leads.

Robbins is all staring eyes and robotic calm, while Bridges spends the entire movie shouting. Given that his character is so unattractive to begin with, there are times when you wish the bad guys would just finish him off.

But the worst thing about “Arlington Road” isn’t the performances or the uneven pacing, it’s the way it gets American terrorists and militias so totally and ignorantly wrong.

Unlike the real Oklahoma City bombers, these chaps are professional, suburban types (the only giveaway is their short haircuts), smart enough never to manifest any of their extremist beliefs. Even more absurdly, when they blow up buildings they don’t do it to send a message like real-life terrorists – indeed, they try to make it look like the work of a crazed loner. They do it just because.

And in the warped universe of “Arlington Road,” the feds actually want everyone to believe that these atrocities are the work of lone crazies rather than terrorist conspirators, because that way the public will somehow feel more secure.

This isn’t just stupid, it’s the kind of nonsense you have to come up with to achieve the shrill, almost fascistic scare-mongering that makes “Arlington Road” such an ugly piece of work.